Our band of characters is made up of a Killer and a Pusher; an unusual party build, but the original intent was to look at our Urban Shadows characters in a different genre and world. How would things be different in a world where magic and tech blur the borders of reality? What would stay the same for these characters? Would they be trapped in the same doomed cycle of violence and failure?

Kate has a long history of cyberpunk gaming, but the genre is brand new for Rob. Given some of our day jobs, we’re playing around heavily with biological and medical ends of cyberpunk!

While at Metatopia 2016, I bumped into the amazing Modern Myths vendor booth. I had been to one of their physical stores back around JiffyCon and used it as an opportunity to pick up a bunch of oddball gaming items that I didn’t want to foot shipping for. Mailing gaming products to Canada is can be frustrating.

This, though, was Metatopia and my head was in a different space than JiffyCon. I had done a lot of self-reflection about my past and present in the gaming industry leading up to the convention. The booth’s pile of Books About Role Playing Games, for lack of any better term, spoke to me in that moment and I promptly whipped out my wallet. I was here, the books were here and to hell with paying shipping to an online vendor later.

The first book I started reading from the pile was Ewen Cluney’s Yaruki Zero: Collected Thoughts on Role-Playing Games. I’ve been a fan of Cluney since his Golden Sky Stories translation project. While he isn’t the creator of the game, his discussions and sidebars expand out the game’s themes and ideas. This is particularly true in the game’s English expansions, Faerie Skies and Fantasy Friends.

For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace.

The Quiet Year was one of the games that I picked up on our JiffyCon road trip. It’s a game I’ve wanted for a long time but I never got around to buying it for various reasons. Avery Alder is a Canadian game developer, but finding her games in her own country is sometimes difficult.